Good morning. Yes, the Kansas City Chiefs proved victorious in last night’s Super Bowl. But do you know who the real winners were? The American people, who consumed an estimated 1.45 billion chicken wings this past weekend.

That’s according to the National Chicken Council, which is apparently a real thing. And it gets better – the NCC’s spokesperson’s name is… Tom Super.

Here’s Tom Super on the Super Bowl’s superb supper superfood: “There are a lot of great story lines heading into the game… but no Super Bowl story line is hotter than wings!”

Well said, Mr. Super, you supportive superhero you.

Now. THE NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.84 minutes to read.

“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.”

–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Late last week, a group of House Democrats announced a resolution to expel Rep. George Santos (R-NY) from the chamber, citing a growing list of fabrications told by Santos while he was running for office last year.

📅 Background: On the campaign trail, Santos said he graduated from Baruch College in Manhattan, then worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup before making a previous congressional run in 2020.

But as it turns out, these claims weren’t true. A NY Times report published in December found all three of those institutions have no record of Santos ever attending or working there.

And like the Energizer Bunny, the list keeps on going. Further reporting uncovered more falsehoods, including claims that:

• He’s Jewish (he’s not)
• His grandparents fled Europe to escape the Holocaust
• He founded and ran a tax-exempt animal charity
• Four of his employees died in the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse, a LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando
• He personally loaned his campaign $700,000

In response to the reports, Rep. Santos late last month said he would temporarily step down from the two House Committees to which he was assigned to “take time to properly clear my name.”

👀 Looking ahead… House Democrats’ resolution to expel Santos, which needs two-thirds support in the chamber, is unlikely to succeed due to lack of Republican support. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and other GOP representatives have said they’re unwilling to upend the results of the 2022 election, unless the House Ethics Committee finds that Santos broke the law.

• The Ethics Committee is currently in the process of being organized, and will start investigating Santos in the coming weeks.
• If he ends up being removed and replaced, Republicans’ House majority would likely shrink from ten seats to eight, since Santos’ New York district is historically left-leaning.

📊 Flash poll: Do you think Rep. Santos should be expelled from the House?

Yes

No

Unsure/other

🇹🇷 Turkey issued arrest warrants for 113 people connected to the construction of buildings that fell during last week’s earthquakes. Turkish officials said nearly 25,000 buildings collapsed or were heavily damaged from the earthquake. For years prior, experts had warned that many new buildings in Turkey were unsafe due to endemic corruption and government policies, per BBC News. The confirmed death toll in Turkey and Syria has risen to more than 33,000, though the UN’s aid agency said the final total will likely be above 56,000.

🇷🇺 Russia accused the US of orchestrating the Nord Stream pipeline explosions last September. Moscow cited a recent article written by Pulitzer Prize-winning US journalist Seymour Hersh, which in turn cited an unnamed source that said US Navy divers damaged the pipelines – which deliver gas from Russia to Europe – on the orders of President Biden. A White House spokesperson said Russia’s claims are "utterly false and complete fiction." In November, investigators from Sweden and Denmark concluded the ruptures were a result of sabotage, but didn’t say who they thought was responsible.

🇮🇳✈️ Air India has agreed to the largest purchase of jetliners in commercial aviation history. The record-breaking deal calls for 250 planes from Airbus and 220 from Boeing to be delivered over the next eight years, with a collective list price of around $150 billion. Air India, which was recently privatized after nearly 70 years of state control, said it aims to establish a 30% market share in both the domestic and international air travel industries.

+Update: Nearly one million people gathered across France yesterday for a fourth round of mass protests against the government’s plan to raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64.

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It appears the Iron Giant is missing some balloons from his recent birthday party – and he’s not getting them back. Over the weekend, US fighter jets shot down two unidentified flying objects that government officials described as small unmanned balloons, as well as a third object that has yet to be identified.

🎈 How it went down... The objects were first discovered by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which following the suspected Chinese spy balloon incident earlier this month started cranking 5-HTP supplements and more closely monitoring its raw radar data.

The timeline:

• Friday: The US military shot down an object flying over Alaska that officials said was a balloon roughly the size of a small car (for context: the suspected Chinese spy balloon discovered over American airspace two weeks ago was about the size of three school buses).
• Saturday: Canadian PM Justin Trudeau ordered a US fighter jet to shoot down another similarly-sized balloon that had recently entered Canadian airspace via Alaska.
• Sunday: A third flying object was shot down by the US in Canadian airspace over Lake Huron. Officials described the object as octagon-shaped, but didn’t use the word “balloon.”

🏛️ Big picture: Teams are currently working to recover debris from the crash sites to determine where the objects came from. While none of the three “closely resembled” the suspected Chinese spy balloon, Beijing has been conducting a global aerial surveillance program for the past several years, per the Pentagon. But both the US and Canadian governments cautioned that it’s too soon to speculate where the latest three objects originated.

💬 Quoted…​​ “[C]omically short sighted and un-Googley…”

Google’s parent company Alphabet saw a 9% drop in stock value following the tech giant’s announcement of Bard, an AI-powered search engine, last week. Employees weren’t happy either, according to a new CNBC report referencing posts made via Google’s internal forum, Memegen.

• “Rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us,” said one employee referencing Google’s decision to stay in lockstep with Microsoft, which unveiled its own AI-enhanced Bing with ChatGPT integration earlier in the week.

👩‍❤️‍👨 Stat of the Day: 30% of adults have ever used a dating app or site, according to a Pew Research study on online dating released earlier this month. And the youths are on the apps way more than the olds (surprise!): 53% of adults between the ages of 18-29 have ever used a dating app or site, while that number drops to 13% for those ages 65 and over.

🤯 Did You Know?... Most “Close Door” buttons on US elevators don’t actually work. And it's not because they’re broken – they were designed that way. The 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act requires elevator doors to remain open for at least three seconds before closing, and in light of this many manufacturers don’t bother making the button functional.

📖 Worth a Read: I Took the SAT Again in My 50s. Turns Out I Had Learned Nothing → (TIME)

🐶💖 Doobert isn’t just committed to helping animals – they give everyone the chance to do the same. Since launching their platform, Doobert has facilitated over 15,600 rescues and 6,100 transports, while adding over 35,500 to their ranks through the Dooberteer Initiative!

• They let animal allies “Dooberteer” in different ways, like animal fosters, transporters, or in-person/virtual volunteers.🏆👏

Recently Amazon, announced they’re ending the charitable initiative Amazon Smile. The good news? Our friends at Doobert offer a timely alternative…

😸🙌 The Doobert Shop, where 5% of every purchase is donated to an animal rescue that YOU choose. Browse everything you need for your furry friend today – beds, accessories, toys, and more.🙌🥳

Help the animal rescue of your choice today by shopping Doobert! (Or become a Dooberteer!)

• ☝️ You’re looking at the winner of this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award, which shows a snow leopard in the Indian Himalayas; the pic was chosen from a pool of nearly 30,000 entries.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📱 More than half of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers in September were no longer spending on the platform in the first weeks of January, per a report from analytics firm Pathmatics shared with CNN.
• 🖱️ Opera, a web-browser alternative to Chrome, Firefox, Edge, etc., announced “Shorten”, a new feature that will summarize articles and websites using ChatGPT.
• 💼 Remote job postings made up 13.2% of LinkedIn listings in December, per the WSJ, down from 20.6% last March.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🍿 Magic Mike’s Last Dance topped the box office this weekend with $8.2 million in ticket sales.
• ⚾ Derek Jeter, the New York Yankees Hall of Fame shortstop, will join the MLB on Fox team as a commentator for 2023, the network announced in a pregame Super Bowl ad yesterday.
• 🏆🏈 The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35 to win Super Bowl LVII; QB Patrick Mahomes was named the game’s MVP. | Rihanna performed the halftime show. | Team Fluff won yesterday’s 2023 Puppy Bowl in a close 87-83 victory over Team Ruff.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🤖 Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is developing its own AI chatbot, joining domestic rival Baidu.
• 🕷️🦋 All the arthropods on Earth, a category that covers all invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton (including spiders, mites, butterflies, centipedes, and more), collectively weigh as much as all humans and their farm animals combined, per a new study published in Science Advances.
• 🚀🪐 Blue Origin was awarded its first NASA interplanetary contract on Thursday; the ESCAPADE mission aims to launch two spacecraft to Mars in late 2024 to study the planet’s magnetosphere with the help of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket (providing it’s completed on time).

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🙏 An anonymous Pakistani man recently walked into the Turkish embassy in the US and donated $30 million for earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria, Pakistan’s PM revealed on Saturday.
• 🛢️ Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo declared a state of emergency Friday night after a leak was discovered in a gas pipeline that runs between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
• 📑 The FBI searched former Vice President Mike Pence's Indiana home on Friday and found one additional document with classified markings, his spokesperson confirmed. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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On Friday, we covered a federal lawsuit in Texas that could effectively outlaw mifepristone, one of two pills used in medication abortions – even in states where abortion is legal.

❓ Our question to you: How do you feel about the lawsuit seeking to reverse the FDA’s approval of mifepristone?

• 👍 Strongly agree: 15%
• 📈 Agree/Somewhat agree: 6%
• 🤷 Neutral: 8%
• 📉 Disagree/Somewhat disagree: 10%
• 👎 Strongly disagree: 61%

Click here to read some of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 10,724 votes, and 829 longform responses.

Monday: Galentine’s Day; National Football Hangover Day

Tuesday: Valentine’s Day; the Consumer Price Index for January is published

Wednesday: Former SC Gov. Nikki Haley will officially announce her 2024 presidential run

Thursday: Weekly unemployment claims

Friday: Mardi Gras celebrations begin in New Orleans; the world’s biggest carnival kicks off in Rio de Janeiro

Thirteen years ago, five-year-old Juliette Lamour donated her entire piggy bank savings to help Haitian earthquake victims. 

• The kindergartener ran a fundraiser alongside her cousin to raise money for the cause, and ended up donating $61.38 for Earthquake relief (hey, for a five-year-old, that's MONTHS worth of allowance money). 

💰What goes around... Juliette recently turned 18, and in celebration of the occasion, bought her first-ever lottery ticket. Turns out it was a $48 million winner, making Juliette Ontario's second-largest lottery jackpot winner in history😳.

Guess the definitions of the following Greek/Latin root words.

1. Eco
2. Fasc
3. Fug
4. Kudo
5. Oed

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. Eco = House (e.g., economics, ecology)
2. Fasc = Bundle (fasces, aka a bound bundle of wooden rods)
3. Fug = Flee (refuge, fugitive)
4. Kudo = Glory (kudos)
5. Oed = Swollen (oedema)